


Fuck My Life

by Jackolidus



Series: Justin and Justin [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, Outer Space, Sci-Fi, Space Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:03:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28836774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackolidus/pseuds/Jackolidus
Summary: Justin hates his life. Justin hates his life, too. There is a solution.
Series: Justin and Justin [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2114421
Kudos: 1





	Fuck My Life

God, Justin was tired. It sucked to be single and alone in the world. It fucking blew. No fucking family, minimal friends, and now no job. That’s right, he’d been fired from the third job in a month for being exhausted. It wasn’t his fucking fault that his apartment didn’t have heat and he was too cold to sleep at all. Or that the warmth of the fast food place, although it smelled like fry oil, lulled him to sleep on his breaks and he couldn’t stay awake. He couldn’t afford coffee. 

At least his ex-boss had been kind enough to tell him to go home and get some sleep and try again in a few months, when he had his life together. Justin knew his life would never be together. 

He was a piece of shit. He’d dropped out of college after the first semester once he ran out of money to pay for it, his dad kicked him out when he couldn’t make rent because he was popping too many pills to hold down a job, he’d been forced to get straight and get a job, make a living for himself. Except how his career path, which had been going pretty well, he was working his way up the real estate ladder, had met an ugly bump in the road when the market crashed. He’d been booted off of his three year long career. He'd had to start from scratch, an itchy junkie with no life. Which was why his apartment had no heat and he had no money. 

He’d been clean for a while. He seemed to have a superpower for not getting hooked on pills too badly. He didn’t really want to start again after he quit. It made him wonder if he’d ever really been hooked. But the sense of family and peace he got from NA meetings was the closest thing he’d ever felt to home. And he’d had some tragic lows. He could empathize with the people who were just like him. 

He chewed on his lip at the ATM, trying to figure out if he should splurge on some pity snacks, just to tide him over through the weekend until he could force himself to get back out there.  
He had just enough cash to make it until his last paycheck came through. Then, he’d have to figure something else out. Fortunately, he had almost a pay period of money in the system, so he’d be getting a regular check. 

He ended up withdrawing $5.80 because it was exactly a third of the money he had left in his account before he had to subtract rent. He had three days. Five bucks was enough for a nice dinner. Eighty cents would buy him a cookie. 

When he got home with his dinner, a burger and fries and a drink, it was dark outside, and the apartment was still holding in some of the heat from the day. He quietly ate his dinner, scrolling mindlessly on his phone, which he really couldn’t afford but had anyway, and then got into bed. It was too cold to do anything else. 

He always felt just warm enough to get to sleep in the first place, but he was always awake again a few hours later, freezing his balls off. But the first few moments of sleep always caught him by surprise and swept him off his feet. 

When he first realized that he was dreaming, it shocked him. He hadn’t had a dream in years. He’d heard that adults had less dreams than kids, and he hadn’t been sleeping long enough to have one for a while. But there he was, standing in what looked like a secretary’s office with mid-century decor and lighting. He paused a moment to look around.

The room was mostly empty except for the large desk with the secretary behind it and the coffee table with the funky magazines, some of which appeared to feature photographs of bowls of strange fruit and futuristic homes. The chair Justin found himself sitting in was old-fashioned, but new. It was an ugly mustard yellow and brown, with a strange ovular pattern. Sitting in a similar chair across the room was another man, who looked much more disheveled than Justin himself, but somehow more distinguished. He was reading one of the magazines. His copy had a leather-bound dominatrix-looking woman on the front. 

Something was telling Justin not to get up, despite his questions. He listened to the voice in his head. He stayed put, wondering where he was and why, forgetting that it was even a dream. There was quiet background music playing from a speaker that was above the secretary’s desk. Justin quickly became lost in it. 

After a while, he wasn’t sure how long it had been, the clock in the corner wasn’t moving, a door opened. Justin hadn’t noticed the door before, but there was a man in a nice suit standing in the open doorway. He wasn’t smiling. He made eye contact with the secretary and sighed. 

“Justin and Justin?”

The other guy in the room, Justin guessed he was the other Justin, stood up and put the magazine down on the coffee table. And Justin stood up, too, and followed both men through the doorway. 

Through the door, there was a hallway full of more doors, and Justin followed both men for a while before they went through an open door and into a small office. There were two chairs. 

The man in the suit said to both of them, “Please, have a seat,” and found his own seat behind the desk.

As Justin sat down next to the other Justin in one of the two folding chairs, he noticed the artificial plants that were littering almost every square inch of floor space. It wasn’t just faux, leafy potted plants, but flowery things, too, and fake fruit trees. Justin thought it looked tacky, but it wasn’t really his office to choose from. 

The man behind the desk began clicking away at a giant computer that was propped up on a stack of textbooks. Justin didn’t bother to look at the spines to see what kind of textbooks this mystery man in a suit had been reading. He just watched closely as the man typed. 

“You two are eligible for a swap,” the man said, not looking away from his computer. “You meet the criteria and you’re both compatible. Which is a good sign.” He stopped typing in favor of staring at the screen. “Justin, your organizational skills will do Justin well. And Justin, your inability to give a shit will be useful to Justin. This is a really great match.”

Justin had no clue what any of that meant. But he wasn’t too confused. He remembered, this was a dream. It was supposed to be trippy and weird. It was a nice break from his usual. 

“Yeah, kudos to The Organization for matching you two up,” the suit guy continued. “This is good. You’re both very lucky.” He shook his head slowly. “You know, I had a pair last week who couldn’t have been more different. Even the names were wrong. I checked their files, the only reason they got matched up was a glitch in the algorithm. They had the same number of re-gens.” He made eye contact with Justin. “The shit I put up with.”

Justin gave him a knowing smile and nod, which was confusing, because he wasn’t sure where it had come from. 

“Now, you’re both first-timers. Welcome to the program. Any questions so far?”

The other Justin spoke up. “Yeah. What the fuck?”

The suit guy sighed. 

“I just spent hours in that waiting room, reading fucked-up articles in fucked-up magazines that I’ve never heard of. It was fucking bullshit.”

“We had to wait for Justin to come in, Justin. I promise, I didn’t keep you waiting any longer than I had to.”

The other Justin groaned. “Fuck, quit calling us both Justin, you’re making me forget which one I am.”

The guy’s eyes lit up. “Already? That’s really wonderful. You really are the perfect match.”

Justin frowned. He felt a question bubbling up. As he was putting the words together he asked, “I’m sorry, sir. What was your name again?”

“Mortimer,” the guy said. “Did you have any questions?”

Justin chewed on his lip a little. “Yeah, uh, I’m just wondering what you're both doing in my dream. We all seem a little lucid.” He shrugged. “I just guessed I wasn’t this creative, you know?”

Mortimer smiled kindly. “I like you much better than Justin, Justin.” He shook his head. “So polite.” He seemed to suddenly remember that he’d been asked a question. “As for the dream. Justin, you’re not actually dreaming. You are totally awake. Your body is still at your apartment at home, but you’re awake. Here.”

Justin’s mind went a little fuzzy. “Oh. Uh. Why?”

Mortimer folded his hands and leaned forward just a little. “First timers, geez. You’re both here because you hate your lives. Justin, you’re freezing to death in your apartment and hang out with drug addicts instead of making real friends. Justin, you just tried to shoot yourself in the head after a really stunning mission tonight, you really did well, kid.” 

The other Justin nodded once. “Thank you.”

“One of you is living a dead-end life, and one of you has everything they’ve ever wanted but still isn’t happy. So we’re giving you the chance to start over.” Mortimer smiled. “Starting when you wake up, Justin, you’ll be a crewmember on the galaxy cruiser, K1115, and Justin, you will be an unemployed real estate intern.”

Justin’s head was spinning. “Galaxy cruiser?”

“Real estate intern?”

Mortimer chuckled. “Don’t worry, we’ll be giving you full briefings and sending you with some interactive technology to find your way through the first few days. Before you know it, you’ll be living a brand new life.” He held up a finger and reached under his desk. “Now, in order to make sure that the briefing is accurate,” he handed each Justin a folder, “I’d like you to look over your file and make sure that the information is correct.”

Justin took his file and opened it to the first page. He was still just floating through. He didn’t feel very in control. The first page had a list of the important information. His home city, where he currently lived, his full name and birthdate. The next few pages were a brief synopsis of his entire life, including memories from his childhood all the way up to the present day. There were little footnotes that said things like “refer to the database for details”. The final page was a list of Justin’s goals in life. That was the most shocking, because, as he read them, they seemed to fit right into place in his mind, while he had never even considered the things on the list. 

“Justin’s Goals: Become a real estate partner, owning his own firm. Live a fulfilling life.”

Mortimer let them read their own files for a few minutes before asking that they hand them back. “Unfortunately, Justin, your crewmates are on their way to your cabin and they will not be happy when they find you. And Justin, I’m afraid you really are slowly slipping away, the cold is getting to you tonight.” He sighed. “Is there anything you’d like to say to each other before we go?”

The other Justin turned to Justin and said, with his eyes locked on Justin’s, “Don’t fuck up my life and I won’t fuck with yours.”

Mortimer nodded. “Wonderful. Now, I need you both to remember to look at your devices for further instructions. When you wake up, Justin, your cell phone will be on the floor by your bed, plugged into the wall, you will press the button at the bottom and it will give you directions. Justin, you’ll have to take a few days off to sleep, you’ve got a pretty major injury right now, but your bracelet will be given to you by Doctor Carabkin once you’re fully healed. The instructions will come to you.”

The other Justin scoffed. “It’s not a bracelet.”

“You wear it on your wrist, it’s a bracelet,” Mortimer retorted. “Come on, you really think I can remember the names of every piece of tech on the planet? I see over a thousand of you in twenty hours.” Neither Justin had anything to say. So Mortimer clapped his hands together. “I’ll take you back to the waiting room.”

The Justins followed Mortimer back down the hallway and into the same waiting room. They took their seats, and Justin pulled out another magazine while Justin stared at the unmoving clock.


End file.
